How to Hack Sales the Simple Way - Secrets from SWISH Founder Ryan Tuckwood

All right, guys, what's up? Matt here. No James today, so everyone can stick around. I got the. The man, the myth, the legend, Ryan Tuckwood from Swish Sales Coaching, a fantastic sales coaching organization based out of Queensland, Australia. So to be a good one today, we're going to go and go over is, you know, the origin story of great sales rep, some things back and forth about all things sales, and it should be fun. So cue the intro and we'll talk to. If you listen to this podcast, you will make your first million within three years. I'm going to repeat that. You will make a million dollars within three years of the first episode you listen to. We don't want pikers. We're not here to save the manatees. We're here to make podcasts. You really want this? You listen and review. Put that coffee down. Hey, Ryan, what's up?

Hey, man. I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Oh, you know, just being the boring guy.

Just dodging lockdowns left, right, and center. That's all I'm doing.

That's what it seems to be. Although we're only a week away.

I know. I've heard. I heard earlier on. Yeah, you've got the light at the end of the tunnel, right?

Freedom day, baby. It's all happening.

It's all happening straight up to the Gold Coast.

Yeah. So. So. So. But for those of you who don't know, Ryan is someone who's very closely aligned with Sales Sniper for a couple of different reasons, but predominantly because, like, as you can see right above him, it's selling with integrity and selling honestly. And that's sort of something that we try and espouse here. And so we've sparked up a relationship with Ryan. He's sort of one of our partners. And I'd like you to just give the elevator pitch. Tell the people who may not be aware of you, most of our listeners are US based. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, perfect. So in a very short version, mechanical maintenance engineer by trade, did that for eight years back in the UK, moved over here to Australia in 2010 and fel to sales, kicking and screaming miserably. Failing Salesperson back in 2010, 2011, culminating with sleeping on a bathroom floor. And all that comes with that anxiety and a level of frustration that I failed at something. I'd always been relatively academic. Like, I'd always done okay at school. I'd never got in any sort of trouble. I'd play a decent level of sports, but for whatever reason, sales just Kind of eluded me. And I was 21st out of 21. People got to the stage where room for improvement. This is opportunity. What I loved about that was that not only was I crap, there was a big whiteboard with everybody's name in there that showcased how crap I was. And anybody knew that joined the company, knew I was the worst person in there. I sat bottom of that board for about three months and decided one day that I'd had enough. Sales wasn't for me. Sales was for people that had the gift of the gab and the extroverts and all that jazz. And my. My crisis point, which usually a lot of people can resonate with, was just. Just my version of rock bottom was windowless box of a bathroom that I was sleeping in. I was sleeping on a bathroom floor on a lilo or a pool. Floaty. I'm not sure what they call them in America, actually. Yeah, just a lilo or a floaty, I think. Yeah, I was sleeping on one of them. Did that for six weeks. And then one Tuesday morning, it was about 2am that decided to go and just pop on me. I. Jesus. I sunk to the bottom.

You hit rock bottom and then three inches.

Yeah, Yeah. I was so close.

Like, oh, that's rock bottom. Okay.

Yeah, now I'm here. So that morning, I woke up and I decided that I was out. I quit. I went into my sales manager. I decided that sales was not the venture for me. And that was the turning point in my whole life. That day, he didn't accept my resignation. He challenged me to fanatically obsess over the art and craft of sales and communication, even though I didn't believe it to be an art or a craft at the time, he said, Give me 60 days, and if you're still bottom, I'll pay for you. And my girlfriend at the time, Alicia, who's. Who's now my wife, best sale I've ever made. I'll pay for you to go wherever you want in the world, and I'm sure we'll go through the intricacies of how it all happened. But within five weeks, I went from 21st to first. Within 18 months, I was running the company, and I did $334,000 in commissions. Not. Not the levels that you. You boys are making these days. But back then, that was a crazy amount of money for me.

And my first 10 years of salesman, I think the best. Like, my average sale commission was 22.50 a sale, so would have been hard.

To make much more Than that it's always relative, right. And it wasn't for me, the money was. It taught me to the journey taught me two things. Firstly, it taught me that sales was just like engineering. It is a process. There's a system that you can follow. And then secondary to that was that sales is impact. My dad's been pretty sick since 2001. He's had esophagus cancer. He's still with us, but he hasn't been able to work. He's highly disfigured. And for the first time ever in 2013, I was able to support them. So send money home. And I'm like, holy. All I did was change how I say things to human beings and I'm making lots of money. So I thought that that is a skill, so anybody can learn this. And in 2014, we created Swish.

Amazing.

So that's a bit of it, A bit of the elevator pitch, I guess. A bit of the journey.

Yeah. It's funny, right? Because I think a lot of good salespeople have a similar turning point where they decide to no longer have it be a, like, I guess a problem bigger than them. Like they weren't given the gift of the gab. Like, I don't know any natural salespeople. Like, I don't. I think there are people who are born that are naturally somewhat persuasive, but those people are not going to be great salespeople most of the time because they'll get to a level to where it's quite easy. Like a hyper talented athlete isn't always going to be the highest performing athlete because they don't have to try as hard. Right. So you can make 20 grand a month just kind of slinging it around, you know, it's a little bit different than if you're someone who has to really grind at it. Like in my previous business, which was in gyms, we had. I had a business partner and he was the sales guy because I just didn't. I didn't like it. I wasn't any good at it. It wasn't until I was put in a position to where I had to do it. I was like, well, this is what I have to do now. And I ended up grinding out, you know, eight, ten hours a day on the dialer, just kind of going for it. And that was five years of my life. Yeah, right. Which is, you know, like, which gets like a lot of volume. But I think like, you know, besides being challenged, like, what was, I think, like, what was the key metric for you that you think allowed you to. Gave you the mindset where you're like, you know what? This is just a problem that I can solve.

I think for me it was a small, small wins. Like seeing, seeing progression. I also conceded like I'm a. So I previously would self sabotage a lot. So once Jack gave me that. So Jack was my sales manager. He was actually the co Wish who's now exited. He gave me that ultimatum. He's like, Give me 60 days. Read this, watch this. All those old school sales gurus. Rightly or wrongly, at that point all I, all I had in my head was, oh sweet, I've got 60 more days to endure of abuse on the phones and then I'm getting my flights paid for. Right. So I didn't, I didn't actually think it was going to work. I didn't want it to work. So I actually took all the pressure off. And by virtue of doing that, I actually just focused on having conversations and trying to enjoy building a relationship. I started to actually, and that sounds really bad, but actually find out about the prospect and what they were looking for. And I started to realize probably about three days in, I'm like my average phone time had increased from like 90 seconds to about three minutes. I'm starting to get a few more leads. I was just appointment setting ultimately at the time. Yeah, starting to get a few more leads out. And like anything, like I'm a big sports person. Like if I'm just starting to learn to play, play golf. Like if I can see those little bits of progression, it keeps me, it keeps me involved, keeps me committed and, and that's what I got. I was on the phone a little bit longer, I'd get one or two less objections. If I did get an objection, it wouldn't beat me up as much anymore. And over time that just kind of accumulated. And then I started to actually make appointments. Then they started to convert into sales. Then as soon as a couple of commissions dropped, I'm like, this is, this is crazy.

Yeah, yeah. The little, you know, the little dopamine hit.

Yeah, yeah. Which I'd seen, I'd seen it everywhere. But I just convinced myself that I can't do that. I'm just an engineer, an introvert engineer that is not designed for this world. And, and I think I told myself that story so often that I believed it the same as public speaking. Like I had a debilitating fear of public speaking until like 2017. Yeah. Now I love it. Like put me on a stage and there's now My new comfort zone.

Yeah, I love public speaking. I also love speaking in front of camera.

Yeah, I used to think that. I still do. I think the people that naturally like that are a bit strange. And I, I just think I had that imposter syndrome for a while. Even with this business.

Like, I still haven't been. I think it's a normal part. You know, you have a bad day and all of a sudden you start thinking, oh, he's going to fall apart. Like, I think that that's a, that's a normal part of being successful, like, and being good at what you do. Because if you don't have those n actual checks and balances built in, then you're going to be the guy who believes their own and starts drinking your own Kool Aid, Right? Yeah, we've all met those guys. And it's like, oh, you haven't figured out that you haven't figured it out yet. There's a great analogy. And it's like, it's like when you're a kid and you're driving, you know, you're like, your dad's driving the car and it's pitch black and it's foggy outside. You look up, you see your dad driving and you just fall straight asleep because, you know, dad's going to figure it out. Then when you become the dad, you realize dad hasn't got it figured out. You're just sitting there straining, trying to stay awake, making sure you don't crash the car. You're just doing the best you can. You know what I mean? And so, like, I think, like, when I really realized that and, you know, it changed my perspective on, you know, how I talk to owners of hundred million dollar companies. Like, I speak to Bradley on a fairly regular basis because we sort of run his sales and a few other things that we do for him. And I was like, oh, like they're just normal people who are just still bumbling, stumbling, trying to get by. Nobody's, you know, amazing at everything. And so I can have normal conversations with Bradley and Ryan Sirhant and people like you and all these other people and just be very comfortable because, like, at the end of the day, man, everyone's just trying to figure it out.

Yeah.

And no one's cracked the code on anything that's been.

That's, that's a really good point. Right. It's been so grounding for me with the journey that we've been on. Obviously there's. There was a lot of publicity in 2018 around the shark tank Thing deciding to take the business on there. And like the investors that came on board, that I must admit, the first, like six months or so is quite intimidating. Like having board meetings with them and sitting down and expressing our goals and our vision and then realizing that they still have the same fears to an extent, in certain, in certain parts of business. They've been, they have been through an awful lot, but they are, they're just real human beings. They've got young kids, they've got stresses, they're trying to balance everything. And yeah, along the way, whether you'd call it during the ascents and where everyone that we meet, like some of the names you just mentioned there as well, it is, it's very, very common that we're all going through the same problems, which gives me that confidence to go, you know, it's all right, give it a go. If it don't work out, what's the worst that could happen?

Exactly. What's the worst that could happen? I think that that's a good distinction for salespeople. A lot of the sales people listening to this. One of the questions that I get, probably one of the questions you get a lot is, well, would that really work when you're in a B2B? Would that, would you really do that? Would you really speak to people like that if they're, you know, like, how do I speak to a sophisticated buyer?

Yeah.

And the answer to me is like, mate, like, they're a human being. Like, you just talk to them the same way. Like, you might slightly change your word choices a little bit depending on the situation, but that's more of a human to human thing. The first time I met Bradley, first thing he opened up with, what does a guy with an eating stick have for breakfast? And I said, I don't know about you, but I had bacon and eggs, right? So stole his joke kind of thing. But like, it's like, I was like, okay, we're, we're fine here. I can fit in with this crowd just fine. The first time I met Ryan Serhant, I was super nervous. And then after a couple of meetings, I was like, oh, he's really good at this. I'm really good at this. We go together, we're fine.

On that note, you spoke there about like corporate or sophisticated buyers or investors. We're the national trainers for Mercedes Benz Australia, New Zealand. And they've got this board of advisors or decision makers. There's six of them, right. And everything's based out of Germany representatives all over the world. And I'VE got our process right. After we've.

We've.

After we've engaged them, after we've put our tender in all of our touch points, we're going for a procurement. And I do the exact same thing. I did the exact same thing with those guys as I did with any other client. More often than not, I get told that I'm not being professional enough, I'm not being corporate enough. And I believe, and I know in accordance with human behavior and what I spoke to Jeremy about this morning, that the buyer has changed. Like, well, they're more sophisticated in general, but they're more humanized as well. Yeah. And little text messages and touch points and breaking the mold and thinking outside the box. These. These days go a long, long way. Yeah.

And like, I've been told I might wear a collared shirt and take a hat off. And I'm like, no, man. Like, this is like, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it.

You know what I mean?

But I know what I'm talking about. And I can present myself very well. But I'm like, I've dressed like this, and I do this, and if I'm going to an event, I'll put a suit on. But I'm not a suit guy. It's just.

And you know the irony there. Like, so as when I was an engineer, I dressed like this on the way to engineer. I wear a shirt and, like, jeans to my. And then put my overalls on, work for 12 hours covered in grease and oil. All the old work colleagues would be like, what are you doing? I'm like, I just like dressing up. Right. This is just the way I. I roll. So it's quite interesting. My old business partner was like, you. You'd have, like, a baseball jersey and. Yeah, even all that. So we were very polarizing, but it worked. We didn't miss many people.

Yeah. Awesome, man. I guess there's always a moment that I talk to really good salespeople where they go, oh, I call it plugging into the matrix. Right where you got. Oh, yeah, I've got this. And then all of a sudden, which. And you can see there's like, an income curve, right? Because with sales, like, it is, it is the purest form of meritocracy. It is. It is business athletics, right? Like, you are only paid if you play, and you have to play well. Right. And so my income went from about 25,000amonth, personal income as a commission sales REP, to over 100 in about four months. Right. Like, it was a very quick trajectory because, like, it was just a skillset thing. Right. And so, like, what do you think was that moment for you and what was kind of the sales environment that you were in where you're like, oh, yep, I've got this. And you were confident you could go to any business and be the top guy?

It's an awesome question. There's. There's a, There's a couple of moments that stand out there. There's one moment where I actually got. I wasn't prepared for the question, and the guy asked me, this is on the, on the phone phone sales. And he said, what commission do you get out of this? And I totally was unprepared. And I reflex told him, so I just went 20%. And he was like, oh, so you get like 4800 if I buy today? And I'm like, yeah. And he was like, I love your honesty. So what's the next steps? I was like, oh, yeah, okay, so what does that mean? And I'm an engineer, right? So I try and reverse engineer everything. So that was, that was one moment because then. So then I started to put into my, into my discovery look. As you know, with most business development reps, we do get incentivized for bringing on clients. But what I want to do is make sure that we bring on the right clients that you can refer us to other people, blah, blah. So when I get incentivized, it'll be to the tune of. And I literally tell them. And it was just like putting that, bringing that elephant out in the room and letting people know what I'm getting out of this instead of them having to think about it. That was a big moment. And then probably secondary to that was, I don't know if it was knowing that I'd be able to go into any other company. It was probably from a coaching perspective. I had a big penny drop was as I got promoted. It doesn't always work out how the best sales people get promoted to sales manager, but as you probably. Yeah, but I got promoted to sales manager and I realized I actually got, strangely, I got just as much of a buzz out of watching sales reps come through and, and make sales as I did of making sales myself. And what I, my, my next kind of penny drop was that I actually love coaching just as much because I was having, I was having people come up to me and say what I'd said to jack back in 2011, and that, mate, I'm out. I can't do this. Sales isn't for me and I'm like brilliant. I know exactly what to do with you from here. And, and then to take in some of them are like 17 years old, 18 year old kids that never sold their. We when we first started this business, it was started as a non for profit sales recruitment business.

Yeah.

To train people and put them into work. And that's because I just loved the coaching side of things and that made me realize that hey, if I can coach anybody in this industry, I can sell any products now. I know, I know that then if this all goes tits up and everything, everything fails, I'm safe. And when you, when you know that you remove fear, right?

Yeah, it's, it's a different feeling. I remember I have a similar thing with you know, sales number seven, all that kind of stuff that we're doing and I'm super aggressive how I go about business. And I remember someone going, why are you so aggressive? I go, because man, if it all doesn't work out, I'll be a commissioner, sales rep and make a ton of money. I was like, I would actually make more money than I do right now because I reinvest profits, I would make a ton of money. And they were like, oh. And I was like, I have no risk.

I had that moment last year. So I Talk about my 3 day wobble a lot at the start of COVID in like March, April last year and my three day wobble kicked in and we were going for a founder exit at the time. So I'm still got the sharks on board but like I don't have a business partner next to me. And I remember thinking, what if this all goes under? Like what am I going to do? I've got staff that rely on me. Some of them we sponsor, they're over from the uk, they got families now, they live here. I'm gonna, I'm freaking out. And I remember talking to my public speaking coach, Harry Singer, who works with Tony Robbins. He's a legend, right? He, and he said to me if it does go one day, basically got me to draw a line down the center of the page and work out my if it goes under and then where will I be if it goes under? And it was, if it goes under I lose, lose the house, I lose the car, lose the business, blah, blah, all that. And he said, how long do you think it would take you to get back to where you are now? Bearing in mind we're about six years in business by then. And I was like, with the network, I'VE got the reputation, we've got the skill set. I've got. I said six months. And he was like, cool. All right, so your worst case scenario is you're six months behind where you want to be. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I think that sort of first point that you brought up, where you told the guy your commissions, that's a rationale. It's a very subtle but very powerful point because a lot of the sales reps are listening to this. You'll get asked the question, like, oh, especially like, selling coaching programs. Like, let's say you're selling a biz op, but you're selling Amazon or Walmart or, you know, crypto or whatever. You're like, oh, like, do you. Do you do it? And they might say, no. It's like, you can just be transparent. My advice is, yeah, I'm the sales guy. I love sales. This is why I'm doing this. If I love doing that, I would do that.

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, okay. And then we just go, what really, really want to find about it is more about you.

Yeah.

You know, and they go, oh, okay. And they just. Like, I wasn't. I was expecting some bullshit deflection.

Yes.

Like, honesty is like, you. The best thing about being a sales guy, besides the ability to kind of make money and it kind of stuff, is the fact that you literally never have to lie to anybody.

Yeah. You really don't.

You just tell the truth all the time.

I love to. I love the phrase, I think I made it up. I might not often. I'm not sure was. Is selling. Is telling your truth better. Right? We've got a. You've got. We've all got a truth. Like, I talk a lot about my dad. I talk a lot about my struggles sleeping on the floor. Like, I never used to tell any of that. And I don't know if it was because I was embarrassed or because I thought that people would think I was making it up. And then I'm like, it's my truth. Right. I'm just going to tell my truth. I'm going to be vulnerable and. And if it resonates with people, great. If they think I'm lying, that's fine. Like, it is what it is. But, yeah, that. That transparency is something that I don't think you can put a price on.

Yeah. Vulnerability is like. It's a. It's a handshake. Right. Like, you got to put your hand out in order for someone to shake it like, so if you're, you know, sales is like, people don't understand like that when you're asking something about their goals, their dreams, their aspirations, the what ifs and all that kind of stuff, that's a very vulnerable state to be in for me to tell you what I truly want. Like that's me giving you like a peek inside.

Yeah.

Right. And then that, that conversation can go down many different rabbit warrants. That person has to feel comfortable with you. Just why I'm not a big proponent of trying to get to the goal too early. I think it's an old school sales technique. You find a goal and you just dig deep on it early. It's, it's, it's the equivalent of walking into an elevator and asking somebody what their relationship with their mother is. Like, it's just, it's just not going to come off well. But if you get stuck in the elevator 30 minutes later, you guys can have a good cry together and everyone can sort it out. You know what I mean? So like, I think that that vulnerability and like the willingness to become vulnerable and I guess the more comfortable I got with that and how I could incorporate some relevant storytelling in my sales that I could use as almost like a tactical. Not weapon. Sounds bad. Like a tactical tool that I could use to help allow the person to become vulnerable by expressing my own vulnerability. That's not just me waffling on about myself 100%. That's never a good.

That's the important part. Right. Isn't it? Because we always say a lot of people don't care about you. Right. They care about themselves. And I get that. But if we truly want to help people, we have to learn the skills to open people up. And for some personality types, the only way they'll open up is if they feel ultimately comfortable with you. And that means that we need to feel comfortable opening up to them. And even utilizing reciprocity questions, just simply giving some information to gather some information. Is that manipulative? Because it's intentional. And I'm like, absolutely not. It's almost, it's unethical if you don't have the skills to help people find the problems they didn't even realize they have. If you can't do that, then you're doing them a disservice because they're either going to do nothing and stay in the position they're in or they're going to go and use another, another company that might give them a substandard service. Yeah.

Like, and then it comes Back to telling the truth. Like, people fundamentally don't always make the best decision for them as like, as a default. And if you like, one of the examples that I'll give in sales calls a lot is like, okay, well if you take a 600 pound person and a triathlete and all you do is swap brains, like, eventually the 600 pound body becomes a triathlete body and the triathlete body becomes a 600 pound body because of the decision making processes of that brain. So like that, that decision making process that's causing them to be ultimately unhappy with where they're at. They can either continue to make the same decisions or they can start to make a different decision. Sometimes people need a mirror held up to them because no one is truly kind enough in their life to show them on an objective level the error of what they're doing. Yeah, because you can be the person. Like, everyone's got the friend, right? Where you go to when you want real advice. Like, my friend came up to me after his first child was born. He's like, matt, you gotta tell me, like, give me straight because I'm in love with this thing. Is, is this thing ugly? Like, I gotta know. I can. I know. He's like, I know you'll tell me. I was like, nah, man. Beautiful baby. Right? So, but like, you know, it's that, it's that friend that you go to to tell the truth. And as a salesperson, like you almost have this freedom to be able to just constantly go, well, that's one perspective. Do you mind if I share another? Yeah, and that's just such an entertaining, fun space to be in because you get to tell the truth all day and sometimes I don't like it. And I get. The more, you know, that's fair. But the better you get at it and the better you get in delivering it and like, the more effective you become as a salesperson, essentially.

I think that's key. Like you just said there, like, it's how you, how you deliver it. That sort of empathetic communication. But sometimes just my old boss used to call it slapping them around the face with a big wet fish. Like sometimes they just, they just need that. I've needed it 100%. Like when, when I'm standing there in front of Jack and I'm going, mate, sales isn't for me. And he's like, you're an idiot. Like, you're in it, you just don't get it. And I'm not sorry. I'm like, I'm Working hard. He's like, yeah, you think you're working hard, but, you know, and I. And I. And I'm so grateful for that. I even talk about, like, cold calling. The amount of people that say cold calling is. Is dead.

Like, not if you're good at it.

How can we make so much money out of it? Are we. We spend. Still spend a portion of our week doing it, and we've got hundreds, if not thousands of testimonials from people that are saying, thank you for cold calling me two years ago. I'm so glad you were able to scramble my internal dialogue in the first 10 seconds and get your foot in the door.

Cold calling is actually one of the most effective and most consistent forms of marketing, especially these days, because no one does it because everyone thinks it's dead. So it's like, it kind of cycles around, and then it will build momentum, I think, over the next few years as people restart doing as Facebook gets harder and harder and harder and harder to be sustainable. But, yeah, it's super interesting. I think cold calling is fantastic also. And, like, in terms of developing young sales reps, like, you want to get slapped around a fair bit, Just go and do six months of cold calling. You'll get three years of sales experience.

Yes.

Then by the time you hop into, like, inbound leads, it's like, oh, man, this is easy.

Yeah, we've had that where we've done it the other way around. Like, I'm cold calling born and bred. That's where I was. Cut my teeth. $300 a day. And then we've had new starters come in and we give them warmer leads. It's really hard to go back the other way afterwards. Like.

Yeah.

Learning to drive in a manual versus an auto. You ain't. You ain't going back.

Yeah, we. We actually have what we call a jail. So, like, we have a sales number jail. So one of our top guys named Will runs it. So it's the Will Hingson jail. And if you screw up, like, you are cold calling.

Yeah. Okay.

Like, $700 a day cold call coin. Like, crazy, crazy numbers.

Auto dialer.

Yeah, yeah, Auto dialer all day long. Like, if someone. If they start missing meetings and like, they have, like, worth work ethic issues, we put them on 14 days in jail. And it's like, hey, man, this is for you to prove yourself. You'll either quit or you'll come out the other side.

Yeah. Nice.

And they go, and we don't care which one.

Yeah. Love it.

Yeah, it's pretty rough. Like, but it's for like, it's like we believe in you so much we're going to try and break you.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Because we believe in you. So like. And most of them come out the other side like they're chomping at the bit to get some inbound leads.

I look back at those days, I remember standing, probably had like a team of 30 or something. And my old boss used to make a stand in the morning. They just pick one person. It always felt like it was you stand in the middle of the room, you got a 45 minute presentation and deliver that whole role play with no script. He didn't even want you to succeed. It was just to rip you to pieces in front of everybody else. Hated it. Best thing that ever happened to me is the best conditioning I've ever had.

Yeah. So one of the things that we do internally is we make them sell products they have absolutely no information about. So I'll go, okay, Ryan, you need to sell thalasse into water filtration systems and go, yeah, cool.

And like there's a role play scenario.

Yeah. And so it's like they have to sell water filtration. So I'll give them like two minutes to figure out the problems they solve.

Yeah.

So what that does is it makes them like, it exacerbates any process issues that they have. So then like, then from there I can go, okay, well, because you can fall back onto word tracks when you know how to sell one offer really well. So like, I'm not really interested in guys that can sell one offer really well. I want guys that can sell anything at the drop of a hat.

Yeah, right.

Because I can, come on, I can sell Life Insurance 10 minutes later I could sell water filtration. I could go to like, I could go to cars and I could go to coaching and it'd be fine. Like, it wouldn't bother me because the process is so ingrained.

Yes.

That's how I teach guys. How, like, because they'll get caught in a particular phase and I'm like, ah, you don't understand what you're trying to get right. So it's like, let's work on that. Let's go into like the actual like nitty gritty of what you're trying to get pulled out of that prospect during that particular phase and then what you're going to do with it later.

Yeah.

And then let's kind of reboot it. So that's one of like the tricks that I use to really dial people in.

Yeah.

And one of the other tricks I'll use is I'll get them to try and do a wholesale in 12 minutes.

Yeah, nice.

But they can't talk fast.

Yeah.

So they have to do it with like skipping certain things so they, they know what they can skip and they know what information to pull and where to sit and where not to. Because it's the exact same thing. It's train hard, fight easy.

Yeah.

If all of your training is like super difficult. And I think a lot of the people listening to this and a lot of salespeople, like they just put themselves in kick gloves when they're role playing with a friend of theirs, you know, like the perfect prospect and it's the perfect situation.

No.

Do the worst thing, the hardest thing possible. Then when you get on a sales call, it's like it's in slow motion.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I know, I know you guys are massive advocates, same as we are. Like we role play four times a day and sometimes you do hear it, especially with the new starters. They go easy on them and I'm like, give them real life. Like you're setting them up for failure. When they hit the phones, like they are going to get people within the first 60 seconds, say they're not interested, don't ever call me again. Like how, how are they going to practice for that scenario? So yeah, massive, massive fan of all that.

Yeah, it's all, it's all, it's all good fun. Here we are like a couple of old sales managers talking about the good old days. What's your, what's the transition for you been like as your company grows, you know, because I think we're about the same age. I'm 37. How old are you?

Just turned 39.

39. Okay, well, sweet as. So I get some city miles on me. So I'm, you know, I look, I definitely look 39. So. Yeah. So like what's that transition for you? For you kind of going from sales rep to sales manager to owner of a company? Like, I guess what's been some of the mental mind shifts that you've had to make, you know, to be able to successfully make that transition? Because I think it's, it's very different and it's hard to let go of some of the things down here and you know, you want to kind of do them up there. So like what's that been like? Because you guys have been around, been around for a while now. You're crushing it. Doing all kinds of Good stuff.

So yeah, we're, we're. I mean we're in our. It's our seventh birthday on the 27th of October so we're, we, yeah, we've been around a while but the, the milestones and the transitions for me are probably more around delegation. Like my personality type historically is somebody that likes to control every aspect. So I'm trying to play a part in marketing, administration, finance ops, building a new lms, putting new phone systems, I'm trying to do all of that. Whereas my skill set lies in coaching. And probably the biggest lessons I've had from our investors is that just, just to get the right people in place. I had this conversation with Jeremy actually this morning is that without a team around you that it doesn't matter how good our training programs are, it doesn't matter how good I am. I need the right people in the right positions that are three, four, five years ahead of me in that division. So there's the marketing team now that Brendan heads them up. I've got a videographer, I've got creatives. Just tell them the brief and let them create magic. So not having to sit in every single meeting so I can focus on revenue generating tasks then from a management perspective, not jumping on the calls and closing deals for, for teams, almost letting them miss a few deals here and there so they can get the lessons from it. Like that was really hard at the start when obviously you're just chasing, chasing cash flow. You get money through the doors. Another big challenge we had was in a similar sort of vein was bringing on the wrong clients.

Yeah, that's a tough one because you see the money and then you know. But your business is defined by the people that you say no to. And I think that that's a really tough thing to realize until you're in a position where you feel comfortable saying no.

We nearly self imploded post post Shark Tank really. There was obviously a bit of a buzz around it all and we were bringing on some bigger companies. Obviously having those guys on board gave us a lot of credibility and.

We.

Were onboarding for fun but we didn't have the infrastructure behind to support it. So it was like get in the program. So we had some advice given to us was actually to stop selling. So we took a bit of a hiatus for a few weeks where we actually stopped selling which was a really weird mess with my own head to stop people actually promoting our services. But it was brilliant because it gave us time to actually build a customer experience team, build out all the Automations build all the reporting, which is now, it stabilized us a lot and gave us an opportunity to really focus on that corporate to enterprise type client, which is where we've gone to over the last 18 months or so.

It's fantastic. And what's like, like what's your vision for the next 1, 3, 5 years? Like where's where switch going?

The big hairy audacious goal is, is based around failure rates of businesses and in, I don't know what it is in the States, but I know in Australia it's like 68 to 70% of businesses fail in the first three years and 90% fail in five. And those numbers are pretty sad and I believe it's because they have an inability to, to sell their, their products, they don't drive revenue. So my big hairy audacious goal is that we are partnered with asic and then every single business that registers the ato, every single business that ever registers in Australia has to go through our training academy. So you're not allowed to register your business without having some form of communication training. There'll be a freemium model of that. So. And some big partnerships. We've just partnered with myob who are a massive accounting company some people might be aware of.

I've got some great contacts at zero if you ever want to.

Have you? Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll take them for sure. And so there's that. We've also moved a lot more into public sector and government type training. So working with the Queensland Department of Education initially to train 10,000 of their teachers and support staff. I really want to get the communication coaching into the schooling system. I believe it's the key to confidence and yes, I'd love to see it in schools and universities. And then on a personal level, my personal brand has grown a fair amount over the last couple of years as I've built confidence in, in wanting to stand on stage. And I just realized that that's how I can have mass impact. So I do a lot of MCs, MC gigs, a lot of keynotes, a lot of guest speaking and I've grown to really, really enjoy that. And obviously a natural byproduct is that people then hear about the swish methodology as well.

Okay, fantastic. Yeah, I think that like that's amazing, that's really cool and I think you're totally right. Like the number one reason why people, you know, fail in business is not only because they can't sell, it's because I think they don't. They didn't know in Sales, like, you know, I speak to reception staff and it's like, hey, I hate to break it to you, but you're a salesperson.

Yes.

Like at a dentist. If you're a reception at a dentist, like, book the next one.

Yeah.

Like confirm the sale at a physiotherapist. Like, you know, physically. I've trained a few physiotherapists and it's like we've 5x their income in two sessions because we taught them to book the next six sessions.

Yeah.

And just the languaging around that, and they're like, oh, yeah, we're, we're fully booked. It's like, yeah, because your clients are coming back. You know why? Because you asked them to. There's such a reluctance from people to ask for the sale because they don't want to seem salesy, but you are doing them a disservice because people will not just take the initiative.

It is an innate fear, isn't it? And it's, it's a conditioning that we've had for years that we don't want to be seen as salesy. And I had it as well, so I kind of, I do get it. But like, you reference physios, they're like back in motion physiotherapists, the franchise. They're one of our biggest clients. And they don't just put their physios on the front line. And they do. We have the receptionist, the administrators, hr. And that's probably a big evolution of our training actually, is that almost 30% of our members in our online academy now are actually not in sale. Not in a direct sales role. Yeah.

They're in a communication with client role and.

Yeah. And if anybody in your company communicates with the end user at any stage, you've got an ability to wow them, retain them, or indeed upsell or cross sell them just through experience. It doesn't have to be a direct. Do you want to buy some more of our services? And I think that's. I didn't really see that happening, to be fair. Like, I, I think when we first built the business, maybe naively, I thought we were just going to coach people in call centers, because that's where I came from. And it's evolved into something much more than that.

Yeah. And I guess. So tell me about, like the, the recent, I guess, slight pivot. Not, not a pivot because you're still going hard with the Enterprise B2B, but talking about the new B2C component that you guys are trying to pushing out there.

Yeah. So obviously working, working with you guys, like when one thing we'd realized was we, we've built up a pretty good reputation over the years and we've always been proud of the personal touch and not wanting to, like, neglect the individual sales reps and only target on the target for the big, big corporates. So what we've obviously been doing with you guys is working through our social channels, specifically around our Facebook group, where I go live every single week and do some complimentary training and really trying to add value to the masses so that that group is growing at a pretty decent rate. The group is called Sales With Integrity by Swish Sales Coaching. And it's an opportunity for me personally to, I guess, kind of help people that might be where I used to be. They're early on in their sales career, maybe questioning their own ability. They're lacking confidence, they're frustrated, maybe they don't have financially. They're not. They're not very well off at the moment. And it's really an opportunity to make sure that I always stay connected with those guys because there's no way that there isn't somebody else going through what I went through a few years ago. So we took a big shift internally to focus on B2B for obvious reasons, to get the businesses to pay for their staff all the way down. But we didn't want to neglect the B2C component. People that aren't in big corporates. And that's where you guys have really come in and helped us help those people as well.

Yeah, it's phenomenal program, obviously, you know, brand new. So we're just kind of kicking things off and trying to provide some value to people. But, you know, I think, I think especially for those in Australia, like, it's. It's second to none in terms of what you can. In terms of what you can learn and, you know, learning from you guys who've sold in the marketplace and you're in so many different industries, like within our nationality, which is so rare. Like, there's just not that many people that can say, well, there's no one else that can say that, to be honest. And I remember when, when I first had a chat with you, I was like, oh, yeah, I've heard of you guys. And I was trying to think. I was like, have I heard of anybody else? I was like, oh. Like, I was like, oh, Ryan's the guy. I was like, that's fantastic. This should be a good, fun chat. But it's been really good, like seeing the alignment of the sales styles and people who sell, like, with honesty, with integrity, and are just trying to do things in the right way. There are some other sales trainers, you know, which we probably both know that, you know, hit people over the head with giant hammers. But you know, and which I understand it, I get it. It's kind of funny. It's that boiler room style of selling. But I feel like when you can learn to sell people through a really, really open, honest, and authentic process, the level of compliance that you. You get, the level of referrals that you get, is really unmatched. And so, like, making that transition and finding someone where you can seek out, like, you to be able to sell in that way, it's just a way to, one, make more money. But two, do it without having to have headaches and without getting into a boxing ring every time.

Yeah, like, you're in a sales call a hundred percent. It's like, it was quite interesting through Covid. One of the most common questions I got when I was a guest on. On different events or podcasts was, how have you changed your sales approach through Covid? And I'm like, we haven't.

I was like, oh. Like, I was like, oh, Ryan's the guy. I was like, that's fantastic. This should be a good, fun chat. But it's been really good, like, seeing the alignment of the sales styles and people who sell, like, with honesty, with integrity, and are just trying to do things in the right way. Or there are some other sales trainers, you know, which we probably, we both know that, you know, hit people over the head with giant hammers. But, you know, in which I understand it. I get it. It's kind of funny. It's that boiler room style of selling. But I feel like when you can learn to sell people through a really, really open, honest, and authentic process, the level of compliance that you get, the level of referrals that you get, is really unmatched. And so, like, making that transition and finding someone where you can seek out, like, you to be able to sell in that way, it's just a way to, one, make more money. But two, do it without having to have headaches and without getting into a boxing ring every time.

Yeah, like, you're in a sales call a hundred percent. It's like, it was quite interesting through Covid. One of the most common questions I got when I was a guest on different events or podcasts was, how have you changed your sales approach through Covid? And I'm like, we haven't. We lead with Empathy. We truly want to understand people's wants and needs and if we have a product or service that can assist them, we, we offer a recommendation if they would like it. So we, we nurture, we add value. We haven't, we didn't need to change anything because that's in my opinion the only way that you should be selling. There's no false urgency or scarcity. There's no, no bait and switch and all that old, old school jazz. Um, it's just, it's just a real humanistic approach to communication.

Yeah. And I think if you have a business like, especially ones that you know, revolve around ascension models and stuff like that, which, you know, a lot of coaching organizations, they do, like you need to get people in the right way.

Yes.

And like, listen, I can sit there and beat people up on the phone with the best of them because I was trained by those guys, did that for years in the fitness sales game. And listen, I was capped out. I was tired, I was angry all the time. I had headaches at the end of every day. The moment I skill set, then my income doubled, tripled, quintupled. I was working. I started to believe that I could do it without being ruthless and actually learned this less hours, I was less stressed and I didn't have headaches and I was actually just happy and chipper and I didn't get anxiety every single time I got an email thinking that I was, you know, someone was backing out because my pull out rate was like 20.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's that achievement versus fulfillment. Right. Like I, back in the day when I was selling, I, I had the achievement, I was earning great money. And the higher up I got within that organization, the more I started to see behind the scenes. And they wanted to sell in one particular way, a very straight line way, shall we say. And it didn't, it didn't really. A very straight line and it didn't really suit my, my style. Even though I was top speed salesperson, they were like, no, we do it this way. And I'm like, you guys are crazy. And then I could see it was very focused on front end revenue. It was all about getting clients on board who cared about the retention. And that, that didn't sit well with me. So I didn't have the fulfillment. Whereas now I say, to say to my team and anybody really that's selling is every day, every single person you speak to, you have got an opportunity to impact their life. Right. You can't underestimate whatever product you're selling if you're removing a stress from them in some way, shape or form, form or a headache and creating a solution for any problems they have, that, that's impact and that's really cool. Like my team, on average that might speak to 30 to 60 people a day in the B2B world. And that's. That's 30 to 60 opportunities a day to actually have a bit of impact and be memorable. That's cool.

Absolutely. Have you ever gotten feedback from a hard. A hard seller on like a, like a sort of like a Swiss style script?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm often told that we're too soft, we give them too much control, should assume the sale. Yeah.

It's really funny. I have a client who is friends with Taylor Welch. We're crushing it for them. And I train like half of traffic and funnels right. Like we train them right. But it's quite funny. I don't mind. I really like Taylor, but he's a totally different selling style to me.

Yes.

Like very rough, very beat him up. Which is fine. It works really well for them. But they gave feedback to our client on a script saying that it was trash. And I was like, oh yeah, like I can see why he said that. And he was really surprised at my answer. I was like, yeah, I can totally understand that. I was like, because if you give me Taylor script, I say it's trash. But like I'm old enough and wise enough to go, yeah, I don't like it, but I know it works.

Works. There's more than one ways to skin a cat. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, you can send me a straight line, I'll be like, yeah, yeah. Like I don't like it, but it'll work if you do it right.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like the thing straight line does work, right? I. That I got taught that way and it, it did work. But then you get, you get buyers remorse, you get people calling up, complaining and, and I just didn't like, I didn't like the rejection, I didn't like the confrontation and I didn't like the fact that I had to dodge phone calls because I was scared of getting abused. And now it's like I go through my messages on messenger. It's like, it's me, I'm totally open, I'm totally raw and vulnerable. And it's just messages of we love the training, we're getting these results and it's, it's actually really rewarding.

Yeah. And yeah, I just said to my client, I Was like, yeah man, like I can totally see. I was like, but you send me a script, I tell you it's bad, but I. But I know that it works. I was like, but ours couldn't be too bad otherwise, you know, half their staff wouldn't be using it, right?

Yeah, they are.

They were like. I was like, so you know, it can't be all bad. But I was like, you know, when you look at like a sales process that you don't understand. I was like, this is my fault for not clearly indecisively enough having you understand. So what I'll do right now is I'll take you through it and have you understand it. Then if you like it, then we can talk about it. If you don't, then we're probably not the right place because this is a style in which we sell. I can't change my style of selling for any one person because it would create chaos.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, but I was like, what I can tell you is that it's very, you know, it's a very well known sales methodology that works quite efficiently as you can see from the amount of sales that we made for you. So you know, it was really interesting. It's. But like there's such a stark difference between like, like I had soar, you know. Gulliver, right?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He did a review of one of my guys sales calls and he tore it to pieces. But I mean guy made a ton of sales. So like they ended up, they were looking to him for sales training. They ended up just going with us. But yeah, it was quite funny. I was like, yeah, but that made the sound.

You're never going to please anyone. I mean if you talk about lessons earlier on like in my own growth and the transitions, that's another one like, like my goal in where are we now? 2019, one of my yearly goals was to stop being a people pleaser, like stop trying to adapt everything to suit everybody. And Andrew Banks, actually one of our investors, he said that you got to give do the greatest good for the greatest number. That doesn't mean that you keep everybody happy. And that was a big challenge for me because historically I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that.

Yeah, I think like the more secure you get in your own realm, sort of you just go, hey man, like this is how we do it. If you don't like it, I totally get it.

Yeah.

But like, you know, this, this isn't a good relationship. Let's just high five and we can we can go somewhere else and let's be successful in our own realms, because if I see you at an event, I want to be cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

100, you know, which. Which is by the end of the day, it's just the most important. It's one of the reasons why we don't lose salespeople. Probably one of the reasons why you guys don't lose salespeople is because, like, in the same way that we sell, like, I want the best for all my guys. Like, one of my guys who's been with us for ages, he came to me, he's like, hey, man, I'm gonna leave. I was like, oh, what's going on? It's not for profits. Taken off. He's really passionate. I was like, oh, dude, send me the details on donate money.

Yeah.

I was like, that's awesome. Super happy. How can I help? Like, that's an amazing thing. Go off and be awesome. Like, I'm super happy to help. So, like, you know, I think if you generally want the best for everybody, your clients, whether it works out, whether it doesn't, whatever you want, I think if that comes through, everyone's going to be happy and you're going to have a good time and you're going to be successful. Ultimately, I think there's.

There's a big enough pie out there, isn't there, for everyone to be successful? Like, even there's thousands of sales coaches out there, we don't need to step on each other's toes.

One in eight employees is a salesperson.

Is that the number?

Is it? Yeah, it's the bluest ocean ever. Like, it's like saying, I train men. There's a few of them around.

Yeah. Yeah, we can work with that.

I had actually a conversation about that with somebody the day, and I was like, well, like, I was, you know, they're doing some niche. And it was like, oh, doesn't this conflict? And I was like, well, let's say you had 3,000 clients. Would you be pretty happy? So, man, I did this, I'd be like, sweet. I was like, there are like, you know, like 9,900 million people in your avatar.

Yeah.

I was like, if you had 3,000, he had 3,000, that'd be cool, right?

Yeah. So when I sat and did the numbers, there's. There's 2.2 million businesses in Australia. Chasing point 0.5% of them is 11,000. If we can get every single one investing a couple of grand a year, you got a $22 million a year business. And I was like, that's a big old, big old pond in it to fish in. Big.

It's huge. Yeah, yeah. So it's a great industry to be in. But anyway, I won't keep any longer. I really appreciate you coming. So remind the people again where they can. Where they can find you.

So, yeah, Easiest way to connect with us is to join our Facebook group, which is Sales with Integrity by Swish. Sales Coaching. I personally go live in there every single, single week with some complimentary training. It's live, it's interactive. You can ask me, ask me questions, and I'll give you some responses on the spot. When you join, we'll drop you a little message, say hello, and we'll send you some free training as a thank you for joining the group as well.

Spicy. I love it. All right, guys, make sure you check out the Swiss show as well, which season two of your podcast should be dropping soon. Is that right?

It is the 27th of October on our birthday, which you may be a guest on.

Oh, there we go. Look out. About to double your double or half your viewership one way or the other. Exactly. All right, man, I really appreciate you coming on. Make sure you go and check out Ryan. He's an awesome dude, selling with honesty, selling with integrity. So it's good stuff. And yeah, man, I really appreciate it. And goodbye.

Likewise. Cheers, buddy.

Put that coffee down.

Coffee's for closers only.